Concert - Glee Club, Birmingham - 10th December 2006
Personal Review
This turned out to be the smallest venue I'd yet seen Beverley at, with only about 60 in the audience. It made for a very intimate evening, something Beverley herself commented upon, asking us to imagine she'd invited us all round to her front room.
First surprise of the evening was Beverley's new hairstyle — much shorter and lighter than we've seen before. The second was how stunning she still looks at the age of 43.
Beverley began, unusually, by introducing the band: Ian Bairnson on electric guitar, Felix Krish on bass, and Simon Willescroft on sax.
Whilst adjusting her keyboard prior to one song, Beverley explained that it was a new keyboard, bought only last week, and she was still figuring out how to use all of its functions. (For any professional musicians out there looking for a recommendation, it was a Roland RD-700SX.)
Introducing Mollie's Song, Beverley told us that Mollie was now almost 15 and a bass player in a band (this prompted Felix, the current bass player, to make a concerned comment about his future employment prospects).
The audience were delighted to be treated to four new songs, well two new ones, and two long-lost ones:
- The first was not named, so I'll call it the N' N', N' N' N' song for now. It was a very up tempo song with a punchy chorus (N' N', N' N' N') and should certainly get noticed if it gets played on the radio.
- The second was called Never Be The Same, and this went down very well with the audience.
- The third was Baby I Want You, Beverley explained that it had been written about a saxophonist she had worked with 'a couple of years ago', who was in love with someone at the time. This rang a bell with me, and sure enough I'd heard her perform this at Ronnie Scott's in 1999 just after it had been written — time flies.
- I was then very pleased to find that Beverley had decided to resurrect Legendary Love that I last heard her perform ten years ago at the Ludlow concert. One of many songs written for a film but not used.
Beverley and Ian Bairnson (though not necessarily in that order ;-)
The concert closed with a wonderful solo performance of I Listen to the Rain.
Chris Ward
The photos on this page were kindly provided by Frank Rehm.
Frank also discovered that the N'N'N'N'N' song was actually called "Is It Only Me?"